Michele Wolf

Henri Rouseeau, 1897 In the heat of her dream, she hears The iron kettle boiling, its scuttle and hum As hurried as hoofbeats across a plain. She drops in two guinea hens. Dancing In a ring round her skirts, the children Cheer, “Auntie, the English song!”  Lifting Her lute, she sings of the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumping over the moon.  How the little Ones hoot when the dish runs away With the spoon.  Ah, spoon — an uncloaked Lute, it waits to be strummed. The temptation of London, of Paris, Of bumping along in the carriage with M. Philippe In his top hat and greatcoat to visit The peacocks, turquoise and gold and green, each Roaming the Bois de Boulogne with one hundred eyes. She sleeps in the desert, under a smiling full moon That shines in the teal night. Quiet behind her, A lion stands, tail erect, having sniffed At her onyx flesh, at the ribbony stripes His color-blindness darkens on her muslin dress, All rainbow hues. She is lost in a dream, Always happiest out of doors, without shoes.

As I was guided by the director through the thick space Of these rooms, worn sparrow brown, and strode With the August sun on my shoulders across this particular Acre of grass, nobody had told me this was the place Where you had summered as a boy.  I have weathered My fourth decade, older now than you were When you died. I can barely remember you, yet I can see You not as my father but as my son. You are age nine. The downpour divides into two massive stage curtains Parting. You bolt from the bunk, loudly racing With your chums down the slippery hill to the dock, Your cape of a towel flapping as if ready to lift you airborne. You are the smallest. Still, you always run in the front. You do not know how beautiful you are, of course, squinting Against the sun, the flame that escapes behind the gray Vapor for hours, sometimes for days. You cannot see That from the beginning it has been eyeing you from afar, That it has focused its golden spotlight just for you.

90th and Third, NYC We almost missed him, although his face, As blunt as a busy Picasso, all shifting Planes, was wedged in a picture frame. We almost missed him, the way one can stop Seeing hunched-over bodies along the street Or a favorite picture above the sofa In the living room, so familiar it seems Invisible, until it has drifted askew Or been removed.  "If only he had something More contemporary," my companion offered. The man in the frame extended his crushed Paper coffee cup, fingers hugging its Greek Pillars and statues, white and blue. "Spare any change?" he asked.  I brought Forth a quarter.  His eyes, brilliant, said I am a masterpiece.  This is where I live.

She recognizes its crest in the way he looks at her. The wave is as vast as the roiling mass in the Japanese Print they had paused in front of at the museum, Capped with ringlets of foam, all surging sinew. That little village along the shore would be Totally lost. There is no escaping this. The wave is flooding his heart, And he is sending the flood Her way. It rushes Over her. Can you look at one face For the whole of a life? Does the moon peer down At the tides and hunger for home?